A thoughtful and funny historical romp featuring a fascinatingly sympathetic Marx.
Carlson’s novel chronicles the unlikely adventures of Karl Marx in the American West.
As the story opens, famed political philosopher Karl Marx is aboard a ship on his way to the New World. He’s fleeing a crowd of creditors, and he’s hoping for more in America than just an escape: “If the reports about the gold in California are only half true,” he writes in a letter to his wife, “I am confident I will be coming home to you and the girls as a new man, able to pay our debts and erase the shame of poverty.” Marx’s landfall is less pleasant than he had hoped; he gets mocked, tossed overboard, and stuck in deep river mud, and he’s being followed by Prussian agents of King Frederick William IV who are intent upon rifling through his papers in search of his notorious Manifesto and amusingly relay the great man’s misadventures (“We have seen nearly every day,” they breathlessly report, “how Marx drinks the local rotgut whiskey to the point of extreme gesloshment”). Marx is befriended by a teenager named Sixto, another renegade running from his past, and the two commence a series of escapades against the backdrop of 1849 California and the madness of the Gold Rush. “It seemed like half the human race was hellbent on striking it rich,” thinks Sixto, not yet aware of the crushing irony of this observation in the company of the author of The Communist Manifesto. As Carlson expertly guides his narrative to the possibility of a socialist republic in Gold Rush California, he misses no opportunities for sly humor or surprisingly touching scenes between Marx and young Sixto. The book’s irresistible comedy is reinforced by all of the letters Carlson includes from the people who are disappointed in poor, harried Marx, including his partner, Engels, and his wife, Jenny (“Don’t bother to defend the indefensible,” she writes to him. “Our marriage is, as you might put it, a dialectical wreck”).
A thoughtful and funny historical romp featuring a fascinatingly sympathetic Marx.Pub Date: Oct. 6, 2025
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Sept. 1, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
An affecting portrait of a prickly woman.
A lifetime’s worth of letters combine to portray a singular character.
Sybil Van Antwerp, a cantankerous but exceedingly well-mannered septuagenarian, is the titular correspondent in Evans’ debut novel. Sybil has retired from a beloved job as chief clerk to a judge with whom she had previously been in private legal practice. She is the divorced mother of two living adult children and one who died when he was 8. She is a reader of novels, a gardener, and a keen observer of human nature. But the most distinguishing thing about Sybil is her lifelong practice of letter writing. As advancing vision problems threaten Sybil’s carefully constructed way of life—in which letters take the place of personal contact and engagement—she must reckon with unaddressed issues from her past that threaten the house of cards (letters, really) she has built around herself. Sybil’s relationships are gradually revealed in the series of letters sent to and received from, among others, her brother, sister-in-law, children, former work associates, and, intriguingly, literary icons including Joan Didion and Larry McMurtry. Perhaps most affecting is the series of missives Sybil writes but never mails to a shadowy figure from her past. Thoughtful musings on the value and immortal quality of letters and the written word populate one of Sybil’s notes to a young correspondent while other messages are laugh-out-loud funny, tinged with her characteristic blunt tartness. Evans has created a brusque and quirky yet endearing main character with no shortage of opinions and advice for others but who fails to excavate the knotty difficulties of her own life. As Sybil grows into a delayed self-awareness, her letters serve as a chronicle of fitful growth.
An affecting portrait of a prickly woman.Pub Date: May 6, 2025
ISBN: 9780593798430
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Feb. 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2025
A pleasant if not entirely convincing tribute to the power of art.
A French art historian’s English-language fiction debut combines the story of a loving relationship between a grandfather and granddaughter with an enlightening discussion of art.
One day, when 10-year-old Mona removes the necklace given to her by her now-dead grandmother, she experiences a frightening, hour-long bout of blindness. Her parents take her to the doctor, who gives her a variety of tests and also advises that she see a psychiatrist. Her grandfather Henry tells her parents that he will take care of that assignment, but instead, he takes Mona on weekly visits to either the Louvre, the Musée d’Orsay, or the Centre Pompidou, where each week they study a single work of art, gazing at it deeply and then discussing its impact and history and the biography of its maker. For the reader’s benefit, Schlesser also describes each of the works in scrupulous detail. As the year goes on, Mona faces the usual challenges of elementary school life and the experiences of being an only child, and slowly begins to understand the causes of her temporary blindness. Primarily an amble through a few dozen of Schlesser’s favorite works of art—some well known and others less so, from Botticelli and da Vinci through Basquiat and Bourgeois—the novel would probably benefit from being read at a leisurely pace. While the dialogue between Henry and the preternaturally patient and precocious Mona sometimes strains credulity, readers who don’t have easy access to the museums of Paris may enjoy this vicarious trip in the company of a guide who focuses equally on that which can be seen and the context that can’t be. Come for the novel, stay for the introductory art history course.
A pleasant if not entirely convincing tribute to the power of art.Pub Date: Aug. 26, 2025
ISBN: 9798889661115
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Europa Editions
Review Posted Online: June 7, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2025
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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